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Wilde Jagd posted:Awesome, it worked! Unfortunate that it's only a donation feature, though. The solution is to not play Higher unless you have a particularly great reason because they're pretty terribly mediocre the majority of the time. Cornac is good if you feel like you need temporal, yes, but skeletons also make amazing archmages if you have them unlocked. Also, while we're doing dungeon order chat: Trollmire 1-3, 4 if you get good defense drops or are a class that can otherwise punk Bill Norgos, then Trollmire 4 if not done yet Heart of the Gloom Kor'pul Arena Scintillating Caves Rhaloren Lumberjack Village Assassin Lord Maze Sandworm Lair Ruined Dungeon/Golem Graveyard Old Forest + Nur Daikara Urkis Dreadfell Insert Ancient Elven Ruins before Dreadfell if I'm not feeling lazy and need better equipment. It's not entirely conventional (arguably, I step into Nur way too late which is risky, and I wouldn't recommend that to everyone but it works for me so I don't really fret about changing it) but it's what I do!
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Jan 29, 2014 19:24
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THanks for the answers on the Reaver stuff. I feel like the gameplay isn't quite clicking for me for some reason. I need to stop bumping so much and actually use the spells. But it is a very fun class, no doubt. Question: Is Archmage viable if you havent unlocked the wildfire tree yet/?
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Jan 29, 2014 19:29
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vulturesrow posted:THanks for the answers on the Reaver stuff. I feel like the gameplay isn't quite clicking for me for some reason. I need to stop bumping so much and actually use the spells. But it is a very fun class, no doubt. Storm and Aether AMs are viable, they're just not as good as Wildfire. I personally think Storm happens to be a shitload of fun, too, but your mileage may vary! Earth AMs are mediocre and kinda tedious, and Ice is just dreadful. For normal reaver play (like, not gimmick shortstaff shenanigans stuff) there's not much to say other than make liberal use of your melee skills (rend, acid strike, dark surprise) all the time because together with Corrupted Strength and the fact that you're off-handing big boy weapons, you hit pretty god drat hard. And don't forget to Bone Grab dudes to you.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:33
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jsoh posted:If you cast healing light and whatnot does it still hit the bad guy next to you with sticks. If so thats really funny.  vulturesrow posted:THanks for the answers on the Reaver stuff. I feel like the gameplay isn't quite clicking for me for some reason. I need to stop bumping so much and actually use the spells. But it is a very fun class, no doubt.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:33
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Jowy posted:Also, while we're doing dungeon order chat: That's basically the same order I do, though sometimes I will throw in Halfling Complex after a few floors of Dreadfell as well. Especially if I feel I don't have what it takes for the Master yet.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:37
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No Safe Word posted:That's basically the same order I do, though sometimes I will throw in Halfling Complex after a few floors of Dreadfell as well. Especially if I feel I don't have what it takes for the Master yet. I'll be honest and admit I'm too lazy to do the Halfing Complex, but I have a quiet respect for the place because the one time I bothered to actually do it in my couple dozen wins, on a flavor of the month earth Arcane Blade, it dropped a t5 randart short staff from a chest. I mean, that's some god drat fine service, right there.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:41
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No Safe Word posted:You skipped Rhaloren Camp and Scintillating Caves, though I assume they're around Old Forest somewhere. Sorry, yeah, I subconsciously left out Rhaloren Camp. I almost always end up doing it really late, during the Tier 2 dungeons, because on Nightmare, one wrong step and the mages will oneshot you with Earthen Missiles/Lightning.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:15
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theshim posted:Yes. Yes it does. This is part of why Celestial/Light is so rad on a Reaver. You can heal, shield, or Providence yourself and you will still smack the poo poo out of any enemies in melee with you while you're at it.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:20
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theshim posted:The hardest part about HIT YOU WITH STICKS is the early game, because short is an infuriatingly rare ego early on. In my two tries (first died in Dreadfell because I'm bad at ToME) I found a grand total of one in the shops for each (check the Shalore town!). Since I'm not pumping Weapon Mastery or Strength at all, your damage is rather low early on. So how do you distribute your stats?
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Jan 29, 2014 20:29
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vulturesrow posted:So how do you distribute your stats? You will need some +str equipment to grab armor training (probably leave it at 1 though) and it's worth maxing the first skill in Reaving Combat for higher offhand and free attack damages, and it makes the early game a bit of a pain since you're not boosting strength or Weapon Mastery, and using a 2h staff means you can't use Rend and so on, so you end up relying a lot on Drain, oddly enough (might be worth at least one point in Soul Rot early). As soon as you get even a single short staff, your damage worries are permanently over, though, and the rest of the game is a frenzy of smashing things with blighted sticks so hard they explode while laughing maniacally. Also of note: Light is particularly fantastic, not only because you can heal/shield/Providence and smash things with blighted sticks so hard they explode while laughing maniacally, but also because you're ending up with a ridiculous ton of spellpower anyway, so all the spells are going to scale beautifully.
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Jan 29, 2014 20:59
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theshim posted:2mag 1con every level, until mag stops letting you put points there, at which point the excess go into con. Once both are capped, I guess I'll max cunning, and the leftovers will eventually find their way into strength, I suppose. This is really interesting to me since its very different from what I came up with (and what is in the "goon guide"). I figured since I was going to be in melee range a lot I needed to pump some STR early to get armor training to 3. I was even splitting pretty much between mag and str. I tried to get a point into a lot of different stuff so I would get lots of procs from reaving combat...and its actually been working out pretty well, my ineptitude with dealing with ranged attackers (mostly mages) aside.
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Jan 29, 2014 21:03
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vulturesrow posted:This is really interesting to me since its very different from what I came up with (and what is in the "goon guide"). I figured since I was going to be in melee range a lot I needed to pump some STR early to get armor training to 3. I was even splitting pretty much between mag and str. I tried to get a point into a lot of different stuff so I would get lots of procs from reaving combat...and its actually been working out pretty well, my ineptitude with dealing with ranged attackers (mostly mages) aside. Yeah, dual sticks is muuch different than a "normal" Reaver build
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Jan 29, 2014 21:04
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Magres posted:Yeah, dual sticks is muuch different than a "normal" Reaver build
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Jan 29, 2014 21:06
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Humjob posted:Sounds good. What about stat distribution? What stats should I increase and in what order? I went with this guide as reference for my last AB http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=38775 So I went with enough str/mag/dex to cover the requirements of various skills, but mainly put points into cunning till it was maxed. Halfling for 5 turns of 100% crits and tons of bonus saves and spell power in crowded rooms was pretty nice. Though cornac to start your murder-mode much earlier is kinda appealing.
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Jan 29, 2014 21:11
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vulturesrow posted:This is really interesting to me since its very different from what I came up with (and what is in the "goon guide"). I figured since I was going to be in melee range a lot I needed to pump some STR early to get armor training to 3. I was even splitting pretty much between mag and str. I tried to get a point into a lot of different stuff so I would get lots of procs from reaving combat...and its actually been working out pretty well, my ineptitude with dealing with ranged attackers (mostly mages) aside. For a standard Reaver I'd probably just go 1str 1con 1mag every level.
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Jan 29, 2014 21:28
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theshim posted:Standard Reaver plays very similarly but builds quite differently. You're still using your sticks to smash faces in melee and abuse Reaving Combat procs, you're just cheesing it by relying wholly on magic instead of splitting your focus. This means that you are squishier by virtue of not getting massive armor, but you are actually better able to smash seventeen flavors (all of them blight) of everloving hell out of anything you want. Ah, got it. Didn't realize the dual staves build was a special one.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:16
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Give it a couple months and it won't be. It really loving clicks once you get the staves for it.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:29
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The problem is it is absolutely boring as poo poo early on and you may as well just play a Corruptor and finding good short staves can be quite obnoxious. You're basically just a bad corruptor for the first half of the game. Of course, once things get rolling it's god drat hilarious, but getting there is just 
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Jan 29, 2014 22:34
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Yeah and AB is a terrible AM for half the game.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:35
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AB is only a lovely Archmage for half the game if you insist on playing one that way, which some people do for whatever reason. I mean I don't really get where that started but they're pretty competent at the whole melee thing early on, even while using staves but before getting staff mastery, thanks to Arcane Feed and Destruction being a thing. Whereas with a Staff Reaver... well, you don't really get much of a choice. There's no way around the fact that you're a Corruptor missing three more buttons to hit early on, so a lot more time is spent either using your bump attacks that are still weak and lovely until things really get rolling or waiting on cooldowns.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:55
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vulturesrow posted:Ah, got it. Didn't realize the dual staves build was a special one. The short staff Reaver is a silly gimmick build that completely sacrifices heavy armor and good weapons for the ability to hit things with sticks, except that said sticks have 100% Magic as their damage stat instead of Strength so they still hit stupidly hard and their lack of durability is somewhat mitigated by their insanely high spellpower and increased blight damage meaning they can nearly go even with a Corruptor without dying in a stiff breeze and god help you if you get anywhere near them. Standard Reaver is a kickass class and a ton of fun. Dual staff Reaver is incredibly silly, takes too long to get going, and is generally harder to play for not that much more reward, but god drat is it funny.
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Jan 29, 2014 22:59
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But you don't have to give up heavy armor because you can just use items to get your 2-3 points of armor skill
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Jan 29, 2014 23:05
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dis astranagant posted:Yeah and AB is a terrible AM for half the game. A Reaver is much worse at being a corruptor early game than an AB is at being an archmage early game. ABs have full access to roughly the same spell repertoire an AM has for the first 10-20 levels while Reavers lose out on Blood which is one of the Corruptor's core trees, and if you're neglecting your melee until you luck into some shortstaves you don't have Corrupted Strength to make up the difference.
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Jan 29, 2014 23:14
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dis astranagant posted:But you don't have to give up heavy armor because you can just use items to get your 2-3 points of armor skill  I am starting work on A Terrible Idea. Might have something tonight 
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Jan 30, 2014 00:54
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deptstoremook posted:So I was thinking, Arcane Blade was fun, but by the endgame you still need to push two or sometimes even three buttons to kill guys. Corona Anorithil is nice but what if you just can't put out enough damage to kill elites and bosses? Plus, those stupid bolts move slow so you might miss the enemies and have to actually push a button. If you do have enough Darkness regen, then a fun thing to know about Corona + Hymn of Moonlight is that they don't break Stealth. So you can walk around killing everything without pressing any buttons, and without anyone knowing you're even there, and you crit every time forever because Shadowstrike. Stealth Chorus Lich a lot of time to come on-line, though. You need: - a source of Darkness, either being a Lich or Twilight or Star Fury / Twilight Surge - a source of Light, either Celestial / Light or Star Fury / Twilight Surge - Unseen Actions if you rely on casting a spell to regen your Darkness - Hymn of Moonlight pretty high You don't even unlock Star Fury until your Lich transformation at level 24, and that requires you to put two catpoints in Necrosis (one to unlock, and another one for the +0.2 mastery)... unless you get ultra-lucky and find a necklace of mastery for Necrosis. Points are really tight even if you cheat your way up to level 24. I have no idea how you'd survive getting there by ordinary means. -- You can also just skip Necrosis and go for: - Stealth - Twilight - Star Fury - Eclipse and on the Generic side: - Light - Hymns ... and you'll have a very playable, but kind of boring, stealth nuke build.
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Jan 30, 2014 02:30
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vulturesrow posted:THanks for the answers on the Reaver stuff. I feel like the gameplay isn't quite clicking for me for some reason. I need to stop bumping so much and actually use the spells. But it is a very fun class, no doubt. My first winner was an Archmage with no Wildfire tree unlocked, using mainly the Arcane, Aether, Temporal, and Fire trees. Basically, Wildfire is one specialization, but Aether and Storm are also totally viable, and I think they have an easier early game if you are not going to go Skeleton for the racial heal and bone shield. For an Arcane Archmage, you can go Cornac and cat point Temporal at Level 1 for an easy early game because Time Shield is excellent. I did not, and I survived just fine because building 'tri-beam' (The three skills Lightning, Flame, and Manathrust) lets you nuke most everything down from range until Level 10. In the Arcane tree, you can begin to build up Disruption Shield, which is a shield you can activate at low mana to cause enemy damage to regenerate your mana instead of harming you. It becomes quite absurd later on. Your next cat point will typically go in Aether at level 20 (or 10 on a Cornac) and getting you Aether Breach, which will ultimately become your primary room-clearing (and sometimes level-clearing) spell, as it ends up dropping a series of mega-damage Arcane nukes that continue to detonate without your intervention. Aether Beam gives you a whirling death zone that can silence enemy casters, Aether Avatar lets you spam all spells that use your main damage type, and Pure Aether boosts your damage, damage penetration, and makes it so you don't have to turn off Aether Avatar to heal up/shield boost. Around level 25-30 you want to work on maxing Essence of Speed from the Temporal tree you got earlier so you can sustain it and act 3 times for every 2 times an enemy acts. Your level 36 cat point should go to Meta (or Cornac can get it at level 20, which would be very interesting), where the first talent can "dispel magic" from enemies at level 3 and the second talent is important for making you immune to your own AOEs. The latter two can diminish and reset your cooldowns if you have points for them. For generics, the Conveyance tree and the Aegis tree are the two main things you have going on. 4/5 Phase Door is hugely important to pick up early as it lets your fragile self warp out of bad situations, and 1/5 Teleport is often useful to get really far away from a fast/ranged nasty enemy (maybe raise it higher later). Displacement Shield is another shield that stacks with your other shields by redirecting a portion of damage to a chosen enemy, and is often worth dropping on a boss. I ignored the last skill, but it might be worth considering. The first skill in Aegis will full heal you throughout most of the game with one point, the second is a sustain that boosts all your shields (SO many shields going on in this build), the third gives you a shield whenever you heal yourself (somewhat situational, but worth sustaining later on) and the last lets you supercharge all the shields you have going on without using a turn. I honestly think the Aegis multi-shield defense is more definitive of why Archmages are so crazy than Wildfire or any other damage tree. I have not won with Storm yet, but I am thinking you will want similar generics, Temporal, and Meta in that build too, probably still building tri-beam, getting Temporal early, and at least considering Disruption Shield.
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Jan 30, 2014 02:40
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In terms of Aether the only thing I'd add is that Meta -> Spellcraft is really nice for an Aether user, since your Aether Beam dradle of doom and your Aether Breach boom-bringer can both hurt you, and can have difficult to predict areas of effect. Once you have Spellcraft 5/5 then you can safely drop your nukes right at your feet, and laugh as the foes around you evaporate. The one area effect in Arcane, the explosion from Arcane Vortex, does NOT hurt you. However, it can hurt your escorts so watch for that. Arcane Vortex is expensive but if you stick it on a splitting ooze, and the ooze splits, both daughter oozes will have the Vortex effect active. They will then shoot each other and probably split again. These slime bombs will explode in overlapping damage circles, destroying anything unlucky enough to be in the area (except you, you're safe from Arcane Vortex damage). I personally find this tactic immensely satisfying, especially when it works on a clear brittle ooze.
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Jan 30, 2014 03:03
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Dodge Charms posted:Arcane Vortex is expensive but if you stick it on a splitting ooze, and the ooze splits, both daughter oozes will have the Vortex effect active. They will then shoot each other and probably split again. These slime bombs will explode in overlapping damage circles, destroying anything unlucky enough to be in the area (except you, you're safe from Arcane Vortex damage). I personally find this tactic immensely satisfying, especially when it works on a clear brittle ooze. Huh so thalore archmage is likely the easiest way to unlock oozemancers.
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Jan 30, 2014 03:45
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Shwqa posted:Huh so thalore archmage is likely the easiest way to unlock oozemancers. Archmage gets the mobility to jump over annoying oozes to get to & from the stairs, Arcane / Aether / Aegis gets incredible slog-fighting endurance with Disruption Shield so you can hang around as long as you want, and if you happen to get a clear brittle ooze or other split-happy slimebomb in the final room, you may be able to abuse it to nuke the boss. Of course, that will take some time and there's no guarantee the boss will survive that long, given the rest of your arsenal.
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Jan 30, 2014 03:53
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:My first winner was an Archmage with no Wildfire tree unlocked, using mainly the Arcane, Aether, Temporal, and Fire trees. Basically, Wildfire is one specialization, but Aether and Storm are also totally viable, and I think they have an easier early game if you are not going to go Skeleton for the racial heal and bone shield. THanks for all the detail. I started with a Shalore Archmage and I have the tri-beam set up. It seems like there are so many good talents I have no idea where to go with my points right now. I did go 4/5 teleport but I can pull a couple of those points out and shift them into phase door. I would link my character sheet but its still showing me at level 4. I guess my level cat point will go into temporal. What infusions should I be running?
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Jan 30, 2014 04:28
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mr. nobody posted:Just spent 7 bucks based on the OP/thread title; good job! Few days later: Best 7 bucks spent in a while! This is still a roguelike but it's a user-friendly fun one that doesn't require arcane memorization of 100 keystrokes to play, has an aesthetically pleasing tileset (ascii is not my preference) and I can literally play it using only my mouse if I wanted to.
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Jan 30, 2014 05:10
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vulturesrow posted:THanks for all the detail. I started with a Shalore Archmage and I have the tri-beam set up. It seems like there are so many good talents I have no idea where to go with my points right now. I did go 4/5 teleport but I can pull a couple of those points out and shift them into phase door. I would link my character sheet but its still showing me at level 4. I guess my level cat point will go into temporal. What infusions should I be running? I like to go Shielding Rune/Wild Infusion/Manasurge Rune. Rune of Reflection is a special shielding rune that scales with your magic and reflects damage, probably the luckiest single early game find for Archmages. Later on when you have Disruption Shield at a decent level, you can afford to ditch the manasurge rune and get another Wild infusion, aiming to cover all three of Physical/Mental/Magical conditions.
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Jan 30, 2014 05:31
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mr. nobody posted:Few days later: Best 7 bucks spent in a while! Also, you can be MURDERTRAIIIIN  If you've got any questions, people in here are super friendly! I know a couple classes okay but am mostly still a scrublord asking many, many questions
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Jan 30, 2014 05:34
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Still fiddling around with it but before I waste a ton of hours, I just have to ask: Is there any interest in me doing a set of beginner's guide to ToME videos? Mirthless's are pretty great, even if it's getting older. I actually recorded myself doing some for a bit but a lot of it feels like a rehash; other than a few things that have changed, his videos are still solid, at least to start with.
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Jan 30, 2014 05:51
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So can I make an arcane blade with heavy armor that stabs the poo poo out of everything with duel wielded weapons or what?
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Jan 30, 2014 07:02
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Bob NewSCART posted:So can I make an arcane blade with heavy armor that stabs the poo poo out of everything with duel wielded weapons or what? But if you're going heavy armor, I'd recommend going Sword & Shield instead. The talents in Shield Offense are incredibly brutal, especially for an Arcane Blade.
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Jan 30, 2014 07:30
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Bob NewSCART posted:So can I make an arcane blade with heavy armor that stabs the poo poo out of everything with duel wielded weapons or what? Yes, although my AB win was actually with a Shielder Arcane Blade (much better defenses due to well, shield, less damage but most shield skills still hit a bunch of times like overpower which is pretty WOAH), and procs your spells and poo poo just the same. Even though he was a Shielder I think it only took 3 or 4 skills to kill each of the final bosses (Maybe a flurrier can pull it off in one or two I dunno?)
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Jan 30, 2014 07:31
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Right, well, Yeeks are a pile of wet garbage that I'll never play as again. "Hey, you want to fight backwards through a compound filled to bursting with undead far stronger than you, beginning with a battle against Subject Z and ending with a giant, wide-open room with nowhere to hide and about two dozen skeletons coming at you?!" gently caress no I don't! What a waste of an hour. Didn't find any form of teleportation and there were three archers at the edge of my vision. Not enough patience in the world to sit through that bullshit again. I'll stick to dwarves and Cornacs, thanks. And this was on Easy! I thought I'd just screw around for fun for awhile, get to the Far East to see what's actually there and work out some kind of order (assuming the dozens of roaming orc packs didn't kill me outright) but nope. No such luck. I guess if nothing else, I unlocked a new class, but I'm sure as poo poo not playing a Yeek version of them like the game seems to recommend.
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Jan 30, 2014 09:11
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ChibiSoma posted:Right, well, Yeeks are a pile of wet garbage that I'll never play as again. Yeek are one of the most awesome races, difficult start aside. Even the pathetically low HP isn't a gigantic unmitigatable issue. Also, Rod of Recall the moment you step inside the compound.
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Jan 30, 2014 09:18
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Yeah, if you don't even remember the Rod of Recall when mentioning no teleportation there's just nothing to add except that You hosed Up. You're not meant to fight through the complex. Gotta know when to cut and run, yo.
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Jan 30, 2014 09:32
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